In Payara Server 5 we will be introducing some major changes to the way clustering is working by creating the Domain Data Grid (see documentation for more info). The Domain Data Grid will be easier to use, more scalable, more flexible and ideally suited for cloud environments and cloud-native architectures. All Payara Server instances will join a single domain-wide data grid for sharing of in-memory data like web sessions, JCache, SSO and Stateful EJBs.

In this blog, which follows on from the introduction to Cloud Connectors in Payara Micro, we'll guide you through the process of setting up Payara Micro as a Kafka Client, which can produce and consume data from Apache Kafka.

Payara Micro 172 brings with it support for JCA adapters, meaning it can be used as a client for Java Messaging Service (JMS) brokers. JMS is a Java EE API which provides a common interface for standard communication protocols. This means that you can send and receive messages between systems in a platform and language independent way. With Payara Micro now supporting JMS, you can setup your Micro instance as a JMS client with Message Driven Beans (MDBs) to listen and respond to messages from other systems through a message broker.